Promises of the Grey

celestia193's Author's Note: One of the spells used by Itachi in this chapter greatly resembles some of the spells in Dragon Age 2, so although there is a debate about whether the spell it resembles is blood magic or arcane magic, I'm going to put it in the arcane category, since there's no blood involved, just pain. Side-note: if any of you are Naruto fans who don't know what darkspawn (hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks, ghouls, and ogres) look like...look them up. It might be very enlightening.

Chapter 6

Despite his earlier attempts to show an outward calm, on the inside, Sasuke was still seething after that run-in with the pompous warden whose morals clearly needed upending. And then, when confronted by authority, he backed down practically immediately. It was easy to see how Corypheus managed to play them like a lyre.

He digs his staff into the ground as he climbs one of the tall, twisting rocky outcrops that dot the landscape, his eyes peeled and searching for anything that even remotely resembled an entrance to the Deep Roads amid the rolling hills and fields. All it needed were some decent mountains and it could almost pass for the western Bannorn.

By the Maker, it even had another important feature that Sasuke recognized from home, before he and Itachi and their cousins had marched straight from Amaranthine to wipe them out. Red Templars, milling about in their camps almost as though they were still even remotely human. With their magic-dampening abilities, they were more than a small hassle for the five of them to deal with. "What do you say we throw that deluded Orlesian at them? Maybe he'll actually manage to stick one of them with the right end of his sword."

Itachi rolls his eyes at Sasuke's suggestion. "That was petty and beneath you. Had you desired it, I would have been happy to challenge the Orlesian to combat or you could have done the same." He shakes his head. "Wardens do not condemn their own to such a fate when it's avoidable."

Just seeing the Red Templars was enough to irritate Itachi to know end, but still he tries his best to mask it. Letting one's emotions rule you on the battlefield was an almost surefire way to die well before you received The Call. He'd seen it happen more times than Itachi would ever be comfortable admitting.

"Well, he's the one who would condemn a village to die." Sasuke focuses on the pillars, even as he hears the notes of the song in his head grow louder. Notes, he called them, for each whisper sounded a little different, and together, they sang a haunting melody. "Do you think that if we collapsed some of these pillars into the passes, we could cut off the way to the village and create a rampart for our cousins to fight from?"

"I never said that I liked the bastard or that the world wouldn't be better off without him." Itachi looks at the pillars thoughtfully at the suggestion. "Just that it was beneath you, but that seems like a fine plan" It could work.

Good, because they had to move fast. The song was getting louder, the way it always did when the darkspawn were coming. In this way, Sasuke was unusually gifted. Or so their Warden-Commander had said. She'd said that Sasuke was particularly sensitive to the ebb and flow of darkspawn energies, and could hear their whispers much more clearly than even some of the older wardens.

It was why he had so many bad dreams, but it also let him feel the smoothly surging horde so ways behind the Red Templars, concealed within tunnels in the rocky spires. "There's a few hundred of them, at least. They're hiding, but…" Sasuke could feel them clearly, without a doubt. "If we wait until Shisui gets here to start blasting the pillars down, they'll overrun us and head for the village."

Itachi didn't like it, but they had no choice. "Just do it. I'll explain everything to him later." That was all the warning he gave before Itachi smacks his staff into the ground, causing the very earth underneath him to shake. Though it was targeted at the pillars. Granted, he couldn't take them all down with one spell, but he wasn't alone. He had Sasuke by his side.

Sasuke takes off over the rocky outcrops gathering magical energy in the head of his staff and blasting the rocky pillars on the other side, piling one on top of the other to built a wall of rubble to keep the Templars trapped and the darkspawn from having a way through to the village. He shoots downing lightning, cleaving and crumbling one side of the wall to create a smooth plane that would be impossible to climb from the attacking side. On the other side, he leaves an uneven staircase of rocks for his fellow wardens to climb over to join the battle when they arrived.

But as expected, the brothers' actions do not go unnoticed, and the Templars, glowing with an eerie red light from the Blighted lyrium corrupting their bodies, all turn to look at them high above their heads. The rallying cries go up and swords are hefted into the air, prompting Sasuke to look just in time to dodge an arrow flying at his head.

"Our brothers and sisters will be coming soon." Itachi taps his staff to the ground a giant made out of magic forms around them. "I call this Susano'o. We can send attacks towards them, but I'd be surprised if they could crack its protective barriers." He begins hurling spells at the direction of their enemies. "As with all forms of magic, there is a catch. Well, two. It's as painful as listening to strutting Templars and one can only hold it so long." It should be enough though. Surely, the other Wardens would come running to their aid shortly.

Sasuke smirks at the sight of the giant form around his brother. So he'd actually fucking done it, then? He'd mastered the spells in that old book of arcane magic that had been shoved away in the library? "You're not the only one who's been practicing, Itachi." Sasuke moves within the giant form, approaching the edge of the outcrop, where he spins his staff about, gathering lightning around him, and slams it into the ground, shooting off giant arcs of magical energy that surge through the air, striking down on every Templar within fifty feet of one another.

"I'd accuse you of showing off for your Mage, if she was here." Itachi shakes his head in amusement as he reaches into the quiver on his back and begins sending arrows at their enemy. The only difference was these were flaming arrows and he had spelled them to hit his targets. "We'll thin the herd. They should be coming soon. Do try to conserve at least some of your magic though."

Sasuke rolls his eyes and breathes in, drawing a little magic in from all around him. "I'll be fine." He twirls his staff about, shooting blasts of lightning out of it as he sets eyes on every target his brother was not laying claim to. One of these days, someone needed to just figure out a way to attack a bowstring to a staff, that way, his brother could carry fewer weapons and less weight into battle.

But even as the first few Templars begin to fall, the ground begins to hum and shake, and from the southernmost grouping of spires spill a shower of rocks and a horde of darkspawn, confirming all of the foreboding feelings that Sasuke had felt since arriving. No…since even before leaving Skyhold. Itachi was right, they were going to lose some Wardens today.

But an answering charge comes from those in silver and blue armor climbing over the rocks and up the spires. "For the Grey Wardens!"

"For the Inquisition!" Warriors clad in the orange of the Inquisition surge over the makeshift fortifications just as the battle truly begins to erupt.

"Sasuke! Itachi!" Shisui is among the few Warden mages who climb the pillars to get the high ground while the warriors below began their charge. "Nice work on getting the battlefield under control before we got here."

Itachi watches their approach with no small sense of relief. The battle was about to begin in earnest. He nods at Shisui in a show of acknowledgement before turning his attention to Sasuke. "I'm going to release the shield. Unless the battle will be over in a matter of minutes, the energy cost is simply too high." With this many foes, that was unlikely. "Are you ready?"

"Already ahead of you, Itachi!" While his brother might like to down enemies at a distance, Sasuke preferred being in the thick of things where he could use the elemental magic he specialized in to their greatest effect, controlling the battlefield and wiping out large groups of enemies all at once. To that end, he surges forward and takes a running leap off the outcrop and flips backwards through the air towards the battlefield below.

"...Why is he so determined to die before he's thirty?" Itachi smacks his forehead as he takes off after his brother, firing arrows and slamming his staff into the ground all the while. He may as well take out as many darkspawn and Red Templars as possible while playing a dangerous game of follow the leader with Sasuke.

Racing ahead, Sasuke passes a number of Wardens already engaged in battle with the darkspawn, but they were fine and holding their own. Instead, he straps his staff to his back and fills his hands with lightning, bringing them together and pressing, twisting the magic until it explodes around him in a cage of arcing lightning and catching ten darkspawn within its bounds. From the sheath upon his back, he pulls the sword that he carried as a nod to his noble upbringing, though he certainly knew full well how to use it as he slices clean through three darkspawn paralyzed by his magic.

Itachi channels his fire through the staff and releases a long lasso of flame of swords. Though it cuts like a spear, easily taking out ten darkspawn. "You're foolish, jumping in like that. What were you thinking?"

Sasuke huffs as he lights his sword aflame and drives it through yet another darkspawn. "I was thinking that I would kill darkspawn now, and then ignore you as you yell at me for it later?"

"You can be such a child sometimes." Itachi takes out some of his frustration by smashing his staff into a darkspawn's head.

As the darkspawn begin mindlessly closing in on them, Sasuke trades his sword for his staff and whirls it around, shooting off spells in half a dozen different directions, before unleashing another chain of lightning bolts. "If that's what gets the job done!" Sasuke twirls about, barely dodging another arrow from a genlock archer. Fast little bastards, they were. "Itachi, look out! We've got archers on us!" Sasuke dodges another three arrows, but a fourth pierces his right arm between the silver griffon insignia on his shoulder and the leather glove ended covering his forearm.

"Sasuke!" Damn it! Itachi summons another giant made of magic and wraps it around them, ignoring the pains that shot through him.

The younger warden rolls his eyes and merely lowers his staff as the darkspawn around him are pushed out by Itachi's magic. "I'm fine, Itachi!" Sasuke presses his fingers to the shaft and breaks it, then pulls half of the arrow out the other side where the arrowhead had gone right through his flesh. It was a painful wound, yes, but it had missed his bone and it was only bleeding lightly, which meant that the flesh wound wasn't too severe. He takes a length of cloth from a pouch at his waist and uses his teeth to bind the wound. "I've had worse than this and you know it."

"It was dumb luck it wasn't worse." Itachi seethes at Sasuke. "It's one thing to fight bravely, it's another to fight with no regard to your own safety."

"I was worried about yours!" Sasuke glares slightly as a barrage of arrows hit the outer shell of Itachi's spell. He takes up his staff again and ignores the stinging in his arm as he conjures a wave of fire that incinerates most of the archers.

Around the edges of Sasuke's consciousness, he could feel the tide of darkspawn beginning to wane. Between the Grey Wardens and the forces of the Inquisition, the Red Templars and darkspawn alike were falling left and right. But this was where Sasuke had been fighting to, because if they were going to have any chance of keeping the darkspawn down, then they needed to seal off the tunnel down to the Deep Roads and bury it under enough rock to bury an archdemon.

Sasuke curses and the world around them erupts in fire and lightning as he blasts through most of his remaining magic, as well as all of the darkspawn within thirty feet of them. "The tunnel should be close by. We need to seal it off while the others are fighting!"

A few darkspawn begin to emerge from behind some of the pillars, giving Sasuke a good idea as to where they needed to pile up the rocks right now. "There!" He reaches into another of his pouches and pulls out a couple of small bottles. He uncorks one and presses it to his lips, downing the shimmering blue liquid in three gulps. Magic surges through his veins as he takes up a battle position once more and shoots powerful fireballs at the base of the pillars, even as he works to guide the shattering pieces of rock down the other side and over where the darkspawn were emerging.

Itachi frowns at his brother's response before he has his Susano'o assist with the sealing. Its massive magical hands were rather apt at shoving into place the large boulders that Sasuke was busily creating. It appeared that he would have to wait until later to chastise his brother, once again, for recklessly putting his life in danger.

As the two of them crush the emerging darkspawn by fitting the boulders into place, Sasuke's nose twitches and crinkles as the scent of electrocuted and burning darkspawn fills his nose. He enjoyed the thrill of battle plenty, but the smell of burning, rotting flesh was one that he loathed trying to get accustomed to. The dull throbbing of his wounds, of which there were several though mostly minor, was something he found easier to grow accustomed to. Just a few more scars to add to his collection. Though he was certain that his brother wouldn't be pleased.

Sasuke sighs as he trudges back to camp with the other Wardens who had made it through the battle. Thanks to some well-places barricades, he and Itachi hadn't had to deal with much of the horde as they sealed up the tunnel.

But when they'd climbed back over it to see the main battlefield, the sight had been moderately horrific. The bodies of the darkspawn had lain scattered across what was once a grassy plain, along with the mangled, twisted bodies of the Red Templars. And along with them, more than two dozen of their own, Inquisition forces mostly, but a handful of Wardens as well.

It wasn't the first time he had seen a battle like that. But at least they'd prevented any extra casualties. The village was safe, the tunnels were sealed, and the mission had been completed with fairly minimal casualties. But it still stung to see the bodies of their fallen Wardens being carted back to camp.

Shisui walks alongside the two, keeping a careful eye on Sasuke, as he was the most wounded of his cousins. "The two of you did well today." Even if Sasuke was utterly reckless, his actions had shortened the battle considerably.

"We were fortunate that the battle went as 'well' as such things ever go." Itachi glances at Sasuke. "Go and treat your injuries. Infection can kill just as surely as any darkspawn."

He was still furious about what could have happened. It was nothing short of a miracle they had both made it through yet another battle in one piece. It could have ended far differently though. There were gambles taken that didn't need to be and Itachi was finding it increasingly difficult to rein his temper.

As far as he was concerned, Sasuke's saving grace was was twofold. That his idea had actually worked, and that Itachi hadn't missed the way the younger Warden had eyed the dead. Any of the fallen Wardens could have just as easily been them. He could have lost his brother today. Life was too short to hold a grudge over carelessness taken in the heat of battle. But that didn't make Itachi happy about the events of the day. It was best to retreat and collect himself. Besides, he wasn't lying. Sasuke should get his injuries treated.

"Yeah, alright." Sasuke knew better than to let a wound fester, and though he'd given it some rudimentary treatment on the battlefield and more on the way back, it was still best to get it looked at by the healers back at the camp. It would be days before they could return to Skyhold, and so the enchantress that he favored would be too far away for him to see for a private healing session. Still, he glances at his brother and smiles faintly. "Thanks for having my back today, Itachi."

"You're my brother. It is my job to ensure your safety, even if you have a death wish." The fragile hold that he had on his temper was already loosening. Itachi could feel it. "Even more so than the average Grey Warden and that is saying something, Sasuke. We lost our parents. I don't want to lose you as well. Go and get that wound attended to."

"Yeah, I will." Sasuke shifts on the balls of his feet, rocking back and forth for a moment, then steps forward and briefly embraces his brother. Itachi had always worried for him, but sometimes, his big brother just couldn't see that that worry ran both ways. Sasuke wanted to protect Itachi too. Then he pulls away and strides off towards the tents, his hand pressed over the wound on his arm to keep the bleeding staunched.

Shisui sighs and watches the tortured expression on Itachi's face soften just a little. "Come on, you need to get some rest. He's alive and the healers will see to it that his wounds don't grow any worse. Now he needs you to look after yourself."

"The only 'injuries' I have are that I used a great deal of magic and that boy is going to turn my hair gray well before its time." Itachi sighs as he shakes his head. "Though I suppose it's just your nature to play peacemaker."

"Someone has to." And if Shisui weren't capable of it, then he would have no business trying to get the Orlesian Wardens to work with them, despite being Ferelden. His ability to keep the peace was why he'd been made Constable of the Grey at his young age. "Besides, even if your hair does turn gray, I doubt that the ladies will love you any less."

"That's kind of you to say, Shisui. Though we both know that isn't my concern at the moment." Itachi sighs as he watches Sasuke walk off. His brother had exceptionally good hearing, but even he should be out of earshot by now. "His behavior as of late concerns me greatly. He used to be more strategic. Yes, he came up with a brilliant plan, but then he just charged into battle like it was his first time doing so. No regard for his own safety." Itachi wasn't sure if it was out of arrogance or fear masquerading as arrogance. "I don't like it and he no longer listens to me."

Shisui had noticed it too and he had a few theories, one sticking out a bit more than the rest. "I think he's scared. He's more sensitive to the darkspawn than even I am. I hadn't told you back when it started, but Sasuke was hearing the false Calling before even I did." And that was on top of the frequent nightmares. "A number of the Orlesian Wardens lost their minds at Adamant. It could be that he fears the same fate befalling him. The longer this war goes on…" The higher the chance of precisely that happening to all of them.

"It seems these beasts will not be satisfied until they have taken everything from us." Itachi's eyes narrow. "He's so young. Sasuke doesn't deserve such a fate. No one does, but especially not him." Perhaps he had been foolish in agreeing to become a Warden. Itachi knew that Sasuke wanted to go, and the desire to avenge their parents and protect others had been so strong at the time. He had been naive, thinking that if they joined, they would find a way to end this before the Calling became an issue. "If there were a way to exchange our sensitivities, I would do it." This unfortunately wasn't something Itachi could protect him from. He could soothe Sasuke's worries for a time, but it was only a temporary respite.

"Yes, I know the sentiment." And considering what Shisui had seen in the other Wardens who had survived the siege at Adamant, he couldn't help but admire his little cousin. "But he's strong, stronger than we might give him credit for. Those with lesser wills have fallen to the madness being induced in us Grey Wardens, but he hasn't succumbed to it, despite being the most vulnerable of us. His will is strong, and it's as much a strength for him as it is an annoyance and source of worry for us."

"Well, I'm certain your skills can be put to better use than speaking with me on such depressing matters." Itachi crosses his arms and sighs. "We know that Sasuke is too stubborn to tell me this on his own. So I'll have to figure out a way to assist him that won't wound his pride or make him worry about me worrying." An impossible task to be sure.

"And while you do that, I have to keep the Orlesians from descending into chaotic division over tactics." A job that Shisui wasn't at all looking forward to, but had to be done nonetheless. "Good luck with Sasuke, I fear we'll both need all of the luck we can get."

"Yes, it certainly does seem that way." Itachi shakes his head as he starts off. "Truly, it is hard to say who has the more impossible task."

"Definitely you, Cousin." Shisui chuckles dryly. "I may have the Orlesians, but you've got to deal with a Ferelden as stubborn as a Free Marcher." Andraste bless Lady Mikoto's soul, but that woman embodied everything that the free cities across the Waking Sea were famous for. Her stubborn demeanor being one of them.